In this study, we investigate interfirm networks by employing a unique dataset containing information on more than 800,000 Japanese firms, about half of all corporate firms currently operating in Japan. First, we find that the number of relationships, measured by the indegree, has a fat tail distribution, implying that there exist "hub" firms with a large number of relationships. Moreover, the indegree distribution for those hub firms also exhibits a fat tail, suggesting the existence of "super-hub" firms. Second, we find that larger firms tend to have more counterparts, but the relationship between firms' size and the number of their counterparts is not necessarily proportional; firms that already have a large number of counterparts tend to grow without proportionately expanding it.

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Bitcoin and other similar digital currencies on blockchains are not ideal means for payment, because their prices tend to go up in the long term (thus people are incentivized to hoard those currencies), and to fluctuate widely in the short term (thus people would want to avoid risks of losing values).The reason why those blockchain currencies based on proof of work are unstable may be found in their designs that the supplies of currencies do not respond to their positive and negative demand shocks, as the authors have formulated in our past work.Continuing from our past work, this paper proposes minimal changes to the design of blockchain currencies so that their market prices are automatically stabilized, absorbing both positive and negative demand shocks of the currencies by autonomously controlling their supplies. Those changes are: 1) limiting re-adjustment of proof-of-work targets, 2) making mining rewards variable according to the observed over-threshold changes of block intervals, and 3) enforcing negative interests to remove old coins in circulation. We have made basic design checks and evaluations of these measures through simple simulations.In addition to stabilization of prices, the proposed measures may have effects of making those currencies preferred means for payment by disincentivizing hoarding, and improving sustainability of the currency systems by making rewards to miners perpetual.

This paper overviews the entire landscape of Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has not emerged out of cryptocurrency competition, but rather became a dominant currency as the first broad market based cryptocurrency. But there are more than a hundred of cryptocurrencies in the market, and some are catching up to Bitcoin. This is a healthy sign of currency competition á la Hayek. Through this competition new technological and security innovations may emerge. In this paper, we point out potential problems with Bitcoin and propose some ideas for an alternative cryptocurrency.

for useful suggestions and comments, and Naohiko Baba and Kazuhiko Ishida for helping us to collect the data. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Recent developments in the Japanese economy are characterized by the concurrence of two rare phenomena: deflation and zero nominal interest rates. The year-on-year Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate has been below zero for about six years since the second quarter of 1998 (see figure 6.1). On the other hand, the uncollateralized overnight call rate has been practically zero since the Bank of Japan (BOJ) policy board made a decision on February 12, 1999, to lower it to be "as low as possible" (see figure 6.2). The concurrence of these two phenomena has revived the interest of researchers in what Keynes (1936) called a liquidity trap, and various studies have recently investigated this issue. These studies share the following two features. First, regarding diagnosis, they argue that the natural rate of interest, which is defined as the equilibrium real interest rate, is below zero in Japan, while the real overnight call rate is above zero because of deflationary expectations, and that such an interest rate gap leads to weak aggregate demand. This diagnosis was first made by Krugman (1998) and is shared by

In this paper, we have proposed a bubble burst model by focusing on transaction volume incorporating a traffic model that represents spontaneous traffic jam. We find that the phenomenon of bubble burst shares many similar properties with traffic jam formation on highway by comparing data taken from the U.S. housing market. Our result suggests that transaction volume could be a driving force of bursting phenomenon.